On Tuesday 4th November the Official Charts Company, produced by English Folk Expo, revealed the Top 40 best-selling and most streamed folk albums released in the October reporting period in the UK by UK and Irish artists. The chart is first announced to the public on Tuesday 4th November at 7pm BST as part of the Official Folk Albums Chart Show presented by Folk on Foot via their YouTube channel.
8 new releases have entered the October chart!
New at No. 3 is Nick Harper with 58 Fordwych Rd (Weatherbox). Bridging the 1960s folk revival with his own bold originality, his new album and tour revisit songs and stories from his father Roy Harper’s Kilburn flat, once a gathering place for folk greats such as Bert Jansch, Davy Graham, John Renbourn, Paul Simon and Sandy Denny.
John Smith, another pioneering singer, songwriter and guitarist at the forefront of British folk, enters at No. 7 with Gatherings (Commoner). As he marks his 20th anniversary in music this October, John’s new release celebrates, revisits and reimagines songs from his first three albums, with brand new interpretations of his own and audience favourites from over 2,000 live shows.
Kathryn Williams’ fifteenth record Mystery Park (One Little Independent Records) comes in at No. 9. The album finds Williams returning to the sparse and affecting sonic palette that marked her early releases Old Low Light and Relations. These are songs made in the quiet margins of motherhood and memory, recorded with trusted collaborators Leo Abrahams, Neill MacColl, Polly Paulusma, Chris Vatalaro, Ed Harcourt, David Ford and Paul Weller.
Katie Spencer’s intimate collection What Love Is (Lightship) enters at No. 12. Evoking Joni Mitchell’s finest later works while honouring without emulating, the record moves effortlessly from wide-open jazz-tinged soundscapes influenced by Pharoah Sanders and John Abercrombie through to the folk-baroque fingerpicking style that her fans admire her for.
Welsh composer, singer and multi-instrumentalist Cerys Hafana’s third album Angel (tak:til / Glitterbeat) is at No. 15. “An old man who goes for a walk in the forest and hears an angel singing so beautifully it makes him fall asleep for three hundred and fifty years” this is the simple, magical starting point for the record, which deftly explores minimalism, traditional and avant-folk music via Hafana’s primary instrument, the Welsh triple harp.
English instrumental trio Leveret return with Lost Measures (Leveret) at No. 32. On their sixth studio album together, Sam Sweeney (fiddle), Andy Cutting (diatonic button accordion) and Rob Harbron (English concertina) breathe life into old melodies found dormant in dusty manuscripts, pairing them with luminous new tunes of their own. The result is a record that approaches centuries of English vernacular music with the band’s trademark poise and originality.
Niall McNamee’s debut Glass and Mirrors (Niall McNamee) lands him at No. 33. Once called “the punk lovechild of Shane McGowan, Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer with a voice like Guinness and tears” by John Hannah, the young singer-songwriter and actor is rapidly making a name for himself with his captivating and timeless songwriting and charismatic live shows.
Dancing Boots (Brown Boots Boogie Band), the debut from British ceilidh quartet Brown Boots Boogie Band closes out this month’s chart at No. 35. Featuring nine groove-laden tracks of classic ceilidh folk dance tunes laced with musical influences that range from New Orleans Jazz to modern Celtic trad, Jimmy Shand and ABBA, the band was formed as a ceilidh-playing spin-off from the traditional fiddle and melodeon duo Brown Boots.
The full Top 40 list can be viewed HERE
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